Australia's ANZ told to compensate 200,000 customers

One of Australia's biggest lenders, ANZ, is paying out compensation to 200,000 customers totalling $13m Australian dollars ($9.3m; £6.1m).

The move comes after the bank failed to apply correct interest payments to some accounts for several years.

The lender told the BBC it had received a complaint about the issue in 2013 and that the mistake dated back to 2007.

ANZ said a system error was to blame and that it was resolving the problem and had apologised to customers.

"There was an issue where some customers were either underpaid or overpaid the correct amount of bonus interest on their progress saver account," ANZ's media spokesperson Emily Kinnear told the BBC.

But Ms Kinnear said the bank would not recoup the amounts that were overpaid.

The bank said the issue had affected 0.5% of saving accounts each month and that the majority of refunds were for amounts of A$35. About 100,000 customers were owed less than A$5.

Ms Kinnear said a thorough review had been conducted and reimbursements should be completed this week.

Australia's banking watchdog, external, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), said the lender had reported the matter to the regulator.

It said ANZ had taken its breach reporting obligations seriously and that the refund payment included an additional amount "to recognise the time elapsed since the initial breach".

"Breach reporting helps ASIC ensure affected consumers are returned to the position they would have held if it were not for the breach occurring at all," ASIC's deputy chairman Peter Kell said., external

Earlier this year, ANZ won an appeal against a landmark court ruling that some of its fees for late payments were unfair.

One of the largest in the country, the class action suit began in 2010 and involved some 43,500 customers.

Last month, the lender posted a record annual cash profit of A$7.2bn ($5.1bn; £3.34bn). The result for the year to September marked a 1% rise on cash profits from a year earlier.